Preflections, 17th January

An Emerging Perspective

These are strangely exciting times. Our comfortable world has been knocked off its axis for approaching a year, and will remain tilted for the rest of 2021. Whether we think that's exciting or appalling is a mindset. My own view is that it has been a very necessary nudge. We have been operating unsustainably for years. We've known it, and talked about it, but done very little.

As we move into this year, it's a time for entertaining radical ideas, to play with possibility, and see what emerges. To move to the edge of what we do and think, because change never happens in the centre. The centre is comfortable and predictable. It's where wilful blindness thrives and the habits driven by the heuristics and biases we have developed multiply and thrive.

So, as I go through January doing that, here's a starter for ten.

The Creation of the Machine

The system we operate in was created in the early 19th Century. As trade grew and the old system of companies being created by Ac…